199X, December 25, CHRISTMAS DAY. Surrounded by family, a young boy unwraps his presents. Santa has been generous this year. A Nintendo Entertainment system. Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt. Gradius. Crystalis. The console is hooked up to the small television in the back room. A plumber tumbles clumsily into an abyss. Change the cartridge. An uncontrollably fast spaceship rams into an asteroid. Change the cartridge. Ominous music begins, and prophetic words appear on the screen:

I still get goosebumps just thinking about it.

Welcome to the world of Crystalis, the cult classic RPG that captured my imagination decades ago, and has held onto it ever since. The way Crystalis tells it, the world as we know it was fated to end in a terrible war that would knock the world off its axis, mutate plants and animals into terrible monsters, and turn back the clock on human civilization a few hundred years. 1997 rolled around, and the end of the world transpired with little or no fanfare; it wasn't until 1998 or 1999 that I noticed the planet hadn't been reduced to slag, and realized those monster sounds outside were just the kids next door. Not that I needed an excuse to replay one of my all-time favorite video games, but I decided that year to celebrate the anniversary of the apocalypse everyone forgot with a marathon session of Crystalis.

Had it been any other game, I might've celebrated once and gone back to my regularly scheduled business. Ah, but this was Crystalis, and I'm a sucker for dorky traditions. Somewhere in the 2000s, I turned The END DAY into an annual celebration: a reason to change my computer's desktop wallpaper to the game's ominous first screen for a day, call out from work to play Crystalis, and encourage my friends to do the same (play Crystalis, that is. I expressly did not skip work last year for the sake of video games. Though I may have deliberately waited until October 1 to bring my car to someplace within walking distance of my Nintendo for repairs). But what is it about this particular game that's prompted me to uphold this unofficial holiday for so long?

For a good year or so after getting an NES, those first three games were all I owned. Anyone who grew up with an allowance, or a well-established game collection already in their home, or the glut of cheap downloadable games that emerged when the likes of smartphones and Steam started to take off, might not appreciate exactly what that's like. Mario was hard and boring, Duck Hunt was fun but got old fast, Gradius was fun but way too tough, and Crystalis was fun but downright impossible. If I wanted to play video games at home, these were my options. If I wanted to beat any of them, I needed help.

It wasn't long before I teamed up with my dad to save the galaxy and overthrow the evil emperor. Although we enjoyed only modest success—saving whatever part of the galaxy Stages 1-3 took place in, and overthrowing the little green slime monsters in the first dungeon—our small triumphs and hilarious failures together are some of the earliest and fondest memories I have of bonding with my father.

Once we got a Game Genie and I was able to cheat my way to victory, Crystalis kept me busy long after we had saved the entire galaxy, rescued the princess, and brought the local duck population down to more manageable levels. I was engrossed by the story—a surprisingly deep one, by NES standards. I loved the freedom I had to explore, and the tactical options I had in facing my foes. I liked the special effects, the neat locations, and the great music. I even got a kick out of the box art and the instruction manual, whose detailed instructions and numerous illustrations fired up my imagination about what exciting challenges and mysteries the game might hold. I often credit Mega Man 4 as the primary reason why video games became more than a casual hobby for me, but Crystalis laid that groundwork—I just hadn't made it far enough in the game to realize it.

In more recent years, as the replay value of the NES game stretches thinner and thinner, The END DAY has remained fresh and fun thanks to more creative ways to celebrate, and to bringing more friends along for the ride. I bought Crystalis for one of my friends one year. I celebrated five years in a row on Exfanding Your Horizons—count 'em: one, two, three, four, five. I picked up the Game Boy Color adaptation of Crystalis, began alternating between it and the NES version every year. I got my wife to start marathoning the game with me. I wrote and ran a Crystalis-themed Dungeons & Dragons podcast for GameCola one year, and I recorded a playthrough of the GBC Crystalis the next. This year for GameCola, I participated in joint commentary of a six-way blind competitive playthrough of the NES version. And let's not forget about the post you're currently reading, which is a much more fitting celebration than last year's passing mention.

There's no telling what future celebrations will hold, but I've already made a mental list of gaming websites that need screenshots, sprites, and sprite maps of Crystalis—maybe I'll get a head start on that this year. Furthermore, I've always wanted to design a playable video game...perhaps you'll see a fan-made sequel to Crystalis from me someday. Who knows? The floating tower in the sky is the limit, as they say.

Wait, no one says that. Oh, well. Go in peace, kyu kyu, and Happy END DAY!

I've done a fair amount of yammering about recording videos for YouTube and my time writing for Exfanding Your Horizons, but it's not as often that I talk about GameCola, the videogame-humor-turned-gaming-outside-the-mainstream website for which I've been writing since the beginning of 2009. Here and on Exfanding, you might see me mention the site in passing or rattle off links to posts I've written or participated in, but most of the behind-the-scenes tidbits are scattered in bits and bobs across 5+ years of videos, posts, and podcasts on the GC website itself. What's it like to be a Staff Writer/Editor and the YouTube Administrator for the most prestigious gaming website referred to in this paragraph? Well, since you asked...

Ostensibly, it's very easy. The longstanding rule for writers, dating way back to the dinosaur days when GameCola was published in a monthly newsletter format, is that you contribute one article per month. That's it. End of requirements. In our current format, this typically works well: we're posting one article a day, Monday through Friday, with our regular podcast posting on the first Sunday of each month; with a little over a dozen staff writers, some of whom are inevitably prolific enough to contribute more, it should be no trouble to meet our monthly quota. Anytime you see a "Classic 'Cola" article go up with a golden oldie pulled from the archives, it means we totally blew it.

As an editor, I can see how many articles are in the queue for review, and when things are scheduled to be published. During a dry spell, I'll often try to churn out a fluff post to help tide us over until the pace picks up. Anytime you see an article about a video series that's at least three years old, that's a sure sign our most prolific writers are on vacation, or else I'm really struggling to come up with a post this month. Actually, that's only half true; as both the administrator of GameCola's official YouTube channel and a completionist, I like to make sure all the videos we record get proper coverage on the main site.Unofficially, I'm also GameCola's resident historian. When I was first invited to join the staff, I started doing my research, reading through the archives from the beginning. With the editor privileges I was given during the site's big relaunch in 2010, I soon embarked on a massive quest to bring all of our old articles up to code, proofing and editing them as I read them to ensure a minimum standard of consistency and polish across (at that point) nearly ten years of history. We have a GameCola Style Guide I adhere to when reviewing these old posts, and several of my suggestions for future revisions have come from past posts. I'll do a full editorial review of one or two new articles in the queue per month, and I'll instinctively spot-check any others I read, but what I most look forward to is the day I catch up with the relaunch articles. Anyone who's familiar with my creative works probably knows how much of a sucker for continuity I am; seeing where we've been makes me appreciate that much more where we are now, and it's a joy to be working toward connecting those two places in a meaningful way.That being said, there's some scary stuff in the archives that I'm sure most people would prefer to keep buried. But at least it'll look extra pretty. Like a skeleton wearing makeup, maybe. We can be selective about what we reference, but we can't always control where Google searches and those suggested "You May Also Like" posts take people, so I figure it's in the site's best interest for every metaphorical room of our metaphorical house to be as tidy as possible when we leave all the metaphorical doors open.

Likewise, I strive to keep our old videos on our GCDotNet channel in good order, moving things into playlists and updating descriptions if need be. The review process is much less structured and stringent there: upload a video privately, and I'll take a quick peek before posting it to the public, ensuring the description, tags, title, and video and audio quality all meet our basic consistency and quality standards. I very rarely watch YouTube videos unless someone specifically shares a link with me, but I make an exception for GCDotNet out of loyalty and my silly notion that I should be informed about the content I'm supposedly administrating. Of course, it sometimes takes me years to do anything more than skim through a video (have you seen our Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward series!?), but I plan to get completely caught up eventually, I promise.

That's one of the fun things about GameCola: I'm as much a fan as I am a contributor. I have side projects within my side project. Call it GamatryoshkaCola. Or don't, because that sounds terrible.

As one of the senior members on staff, I also feel a strong sense of investment in the site. I've been here longer than the majority of the people currently on our staff roster, and aside from Alex "Jeddy" Jedraszczak (our Editor-in-Chief), I'm the only old-timer who's been continuously active over the last year or two. I'm relieved that Paul Franzen didn't fire me about a half-dozen times while he was Editor-in-Chief, because it's been a fun ride so far, and I've been honored to collaborate with him and with Jeddy on some big and small decisions behind the scenes. Together, we've developed a process guide for editors, diffused a few potentially ugly situations on the YouTube channel, and turned The END DAY into an official GameCola holiday. My perfectionist and control freak tendencies have mellowed considerably since joining the staff; frequent participation in group e-mail discussions, podcasts, and video commentary has a way of instilling an appreciation for effective teamwork.

Do I see myself staying with GameCola indefinitely? Hey, I'm happy to stick around as long as they'll have me. As with Exfanding, there could come a day when it's no longer sensible for me to keep going, but I don't anticipate giving up being a gamer anytime soon. GameCola is a great outlet for that side of my personality, and I've met some wonderful and hilarious people as a result of being here; I'm in no rush to break away, especially with all those side projects left to finish. I've got some video and column ideas yet, and at least one more RPGcast that I'm really looking forward to pulling together. And let's not forget about the 40-odd Mega Man games I have yet to review.

In other words, as I say in my biographical blurb on the site, you're pretty much stuck with me. Sorry.

I am not what you would consider a "Brony." I've watched one episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and I did so only because my YouTube fans started asking me questions about this show I'd never seen. My wife speaks very highly of the show, and I've been in the room from time to time when she's been watching an episode, but that is the extent of my knowledge. It seems like a cute, family-friendly show with high production values and smart writing that could appeal to children and adults alike, provided whimsical adventures and anthropomorphic ponies aren't outside their taste range. It also seems that appearances are deceiving, because the way some other YouTube viewers talk about it, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is the antichrist.

Right, because I remember the part of the book of Revelation that warns about the cutie mark of the beast.

As you may recall, my wife and I recorded a blind playthrough of Mega Pony, a fan-made PC game that very successfully crosses Mega Man with My Little Pony. Initial reactions to the videos ranged from bewildered to enthusiastic, but the general response was positive, regardless of people's opinions on ponies. Suddenly, I'm receiving one harsh comment after another from people who hate My Little Pony, think the Mega Man franchise is being destroyed by association, and have nothing but contempt for anyone who even sympathizes with fans of the show. Senator McCarthy, your legacy is alive and well.

So you don't like the show. Fine. So you're tired of seeing ponies slapped over top of everything anyone has ever loved (seriously, try Googling "My Little Pony" with any other noun and see how long it takes until you don't get any valid hits). Fine. Gripe about those things if you have to; don't swear at me in all caps, scream about how awful this well-designed game is because it exists at all, and disrespect the fans who have gone out of their way to be polite to you despite your arrogant comments. I've dealt with plenty of trolls and have seen plenty of arguments on the Internet, but such violent contempt for an uplifting cartoon about friendship and happiness is startling and does not speak well to the future of our species.

Maybe everyone would calm down if I spontaneously burst into a song about thinking before you speak and being kind to others. That works in real life, doesn't it?

I'm back from a week and a half in Europe, having rejoined my college choir for one last tour with our conductor before his retirement. You would think something like that would be perfect blog fodder, but chances are good that I'll be spending my time plowing through some longstanding side projects instead over the next few weeks. Ah, but this post is supposed to be looking back at the past! Here's what I was up to in May (aside from traveling, singing, overdosing on goulash, etc.):

The Backloggery:I needed a little "comfort gaming," if you will, to calm my nerves before launching into the most travel-intensive portion of my trip abroad, so I fired up a new port of an old favorite in order to get my fix while still chipping away at my video game backlog. I also took a crack at the one game on the list that'll probably make you raise an eyebrow if you're unfamiliar with it as the text-only precursor to the first Leisure Suit Larry game. Well, that might be eyebrow-worthy anyhow. You'll notice I took that same game off the list—when your text parser forces you to input excessively exact phrases because it doesn't recognize such basic words as "LOOK" and "TALK," it's time to move on. My enthusiasm for vintage games only goes so far.Started:- Mass Effect 3 (Origin)- Mega Man Battle Network 3 White (GBA)- Softporn Adventure (PC)Beat: - Mass Effect 2 (Origin)- Mega Man 4 (VC)Completed: - Mega Man 4 (VC)Removed:- Softporn Adventure (PC)

Oh hey, guess it's time to change my calendar over to June already, huh?

One of my all-time favorite RPGs and video/computer games in general is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which—for me, at least—set a new standard for how immersive a game world could be. Before SW:KotOR (or just KotOR, because sometimes even abbreviations need abbreviating), it was generally an emotional connection with the characters, a large degree of freedom in my actions, or the overall atmosphere that got me immersed in a game. With KotOR, it was all of these plus one more key component: there were story-defining consequences to my actions.In any other RPG I'd played, consequences were typically limited to the gameplay: if I choose to burn through all my most powerful items in this boss fight, I might be ill-prepared for the next one; if I fail to explore the dungeon thoroughly enough, I'll miss out on some fun secret area. I'd learned to start being a jerk whenever somebody started asking me to save their missing cat or go on some silly quest to save the world, because I'd always be forced to choose "Yes" anyhow, and the responses my characters would give to weasel their way out were usually pretty entertaining. Every once in a while there'd be a Chrono Trigger or a Space Quest with one or two pivotal moments where you could alter the ending of the game, but by and large, the only consequences I ever faced were of no lasting impact to the story.KotOR made me choose. When there was a man being threatened in the street, I had to decide whether I'd swoop in to rescue him, walk past him quickly to avoid getting involved, or kill the assailants so I could threaten the man myself. I found myself invested in my character and the game world in a way I'd never been invested before, because I was actively shaping their development. You can play GoldenEye 007 and use the corpses of your enemies as target practice for throwing knives, but when a cutscene rolls around, you're still the good guy and not some twisted psychopath. You can play King's Quest and attempt to do cruel and unusual things to every person and creature you meet, but at the end of the adventure, you'll still be the pride of the kingdom. KotOR was the first game I'd played where even the most insignificant actions regularly had ramifications that wouldn't manifest until later on, and watching my decisions mean something got me hooked in a big way.A few years later, I started hearing about Mass Effect. I knew very little about it, other than that it was another sci-fi RPG made by BioWare—the same company behind KotOR—and that your decisions made some sort of cumulative impact, and that it was very pretty. At the time, "very pretty" equated to "no hope of running it on my computer," so I kept the game in the back of my mind for several years. During that time, I made it a point to avoid spoiling anything about the game for myself. I had to stay off the Internet for about a week when people made it to the apparently controversial ending of Mass Effect 3, which I still refuse to learn more about until I get there myself. When Mass Effect started coming up in conversation again recently on the blogs I follow, and when the realization began to sink in that my new (used) computer has been running almost nothing but '90s adventure games since I got it, I had no trouble picking out which PC game to start playing next.I had to restart the game three times before I got to the opening cutscene.Mass Effect has a number of customization options, but for once, overdoing it with the graphics wasn't to blame. Even at the maximum settings, the game runs perfectly on my new (old) rig. I'd made it part of the way through the cleverly immersive character creation process ("Sorry, Mr./Mrs. Shepherd; your personal file has been corrupted. Please help us recreate the data by making selections about your backstory, character class, and personal appearance.") and then the game froze. More accurately, it stopped responding normally to my input. I tried clicking on the new options being presented to me, but instead of making selections, my clicking simply moved the selection cursor up or down. How can I advance to the next screen if clicking on the option I want only makes the cursor jump to the next option?I did a forced shutdown of the game and booted it back up again. Maybe this was just a glitch; these things happen. I got back to the point where I got stuck before...and got stuck again. At this point, I was starting to suspect I'd somehow brought this upon myself, having spent a good 10-15 minutes fiddling with the settings before launching the character creator. Best to set everything back to the defaults and sort out the problem once I was into the game proper. Another forced shutdown.On my third attempt, after reverting all settings to their initial states, I was feeling more annoyed than immersed. What kind of game developer lets the player configure himself into a corner before the game even begins? My suspicions proved correct when I reached the point where I'd gotten stuck twice over, and suddenly I had no problems clicking on anything.What had happened, precisely? It all had to do with the way I'd mapped the mouse controls.For as long as I've been playing first-person shooters, the left mouse button has always moved me forward, and the right has always moved me backward. None of this WASD nonsense where there's no good way to reach half your hotkeys in combat; all my basic movement of looking and walking around is mapped to the mouse. I grew up on platformers, where precise movement is paramount—I've got greater control over where I'm moving by pointing my mouse in that direction than trying to nudge myself back and forth with the keyboard.That leaves my entire left hand free to use the entire keyboard for all other actions—CTRL for firing, SHIFT for running, SPACEBAR for interacting with objects, X for jumping, D for ducking, and all the surrounding keys for any extra options I might have. Again, platformers taught me how to do some combination of running, jumping, charging, firing, and sliding at the same time, so holding down two or three keys that are right next to each other is second nature to me. Plus, it's rare that a game either requires or allows you to take more than two or three actions at a time, so it's not a big deal if I have to stop firing for a split-second to activate my health recovery item that might require me to stop firing in the first place. I've still got full mouse control to wheel myself out of harm's way if I'm still under attack.Beyond that, I play most first-person shooters as a sniper, so having my gun trigger mapped to the left mouse button (which is usually the default) actually increases the chances I'll click too hard and throw off my aim. I don't care if it's weird; it's worked for every FPS I've ever played, and I can't be held responsible if you offer me the opportunity to map the Q key however I see fit. I've been alt-firing with Z and cycling through weapons with the mouse scroll wheel since 199X; it's too late to change those habits now.Unless those habits prevent me from getting through the first few screens of Mass Effect. For the first time in any game I have ever played, mapping movement to the left mouse button replaces your ability to make menu selections with the mouse. Instead, left-clicking moves the cursor up (like pressing the up arrow on the keyboard, typically reserved for moving your character forward), and right-clicking moves the cursor down (like pressing the down arrow on the keyboard, typically reserved for moving your character backward). Mass Effect interpreted my character movement preferences to apply to the menu screen as well. Left-clicking only made selections if it wasn't mapped to a movement command.I discovered SPACEBAR, my interaction key, could make selections on the menu screen. So...if I wanted to do this my way, I'd have to highlight my menu options (save, equip, level up, etc.) with the mouse, and then use the keyboard to select them. This system was awkward, to say the least, and it broke down entirely on the Codex sub-menus, which do not cooperate well with keyboard commands. A good 45 minutes into the first 10 minutes of the game, I gave up. No amount of comfort during the non-menu portions of the game was worth the utter inconvenience of having to handle the menu portions this way. I reverted the controls to their WASDefaults, gingerly adjusted some of the more obnoxiously placed controls, and made duplicate mappings of fire (default left click) and backpedal (default S) to CTRL and right click, respectively, where I knew I'd be reaching for them by mistake from time to time. I was not happy about this, but at least I was finally able to play.Once the initial irritation of the control fiasco began to subside, I found myself experiencing that same kind of immersion I came to love about KotOR. The graphics were indeed pretty, the voice acting was top-notch, the animations were fluid and realistic, the sound effects and music gave off all the appropriate vibes of being IN SPAAAAAAAAACE, and the intimations I'd heard about your choices potentially affecting the next two games in the series made every selection from those dialogue trees seem all the more important. I was hooked.Then they dropped me on a planet with two teammates I couldn't directly control, put a gun in my hands, and demolished any lingering misconceptions that combat was turn-based like in KotOR. I know I'd been configuring the game to play like an FPS, but I wasn't expecting it to be an FPS. Now the control situation had been upgraded from inconvenience to serious problem--how could I possibly survive an onslaught of enemies when I move when I want to fire, and fire when I want to move? How could I manage giving commands to my squad when I can barely manage giving commands to myself?In what is becoming an unpleasantly common occurrence, I bumped the combat difficulty down to the minimum. The controls were going to be a handicap; the least I could do was try to level the playing field. I engaged my first enemies with all the grace of a sedated water buffalo, but I survived. I knew I wouldn't be the crack shot I was in Elite Force and No One Lives Forever, but I'd at least be able to get by.The rest of my first game session went well. I emerged victorious from a few more battles, got a better feel for how the dialogue wheels worked (polite or friendly options at the top of the wheel, neutral options in the middle, rude or angry options at the bottom), read up on my galactic history in the Codex, and played around with leveling up my lead character (leaving my squadmates to automatically level up until I had any idea what any of their abilities meant). As had happened many times before with my KotOR sessions, I completely lost track of the time. The only reason I made it to bed on time that night was because I failed to disarm a bomb in time and was blown up, which is usually a good stopping point. I had spent several valuable minutes trying to find a way to get to the blinking beacon on my minimap, which I presumed to be a bomb, but was in fact a marker I'd accidentally placed in the middle of a wall while fumbling through my map screen. Only the best and the brightest are saving this galaxy.I'm now a fair portion into the game—I'd say halfway, but I'm not about to look it up and ruin the surprise—and I'm finding more and more that the interface is interfering with the immersion. My control scheme lacks the finesse to which I'm accustomed, so every combat situation ends up being less about tactics and more about brute force than I'd prefer. I could bump up the difficulty to "encourage" myself to be more tactical, but I'm concerned I'll end up dying more frequently than necessary because I'm still occasionally standing there trying to figure out why my gun is overheating when I'm supposed to be running forward.I'm encountering a similar problem with the decryption minigame where you essentially play Frogger, trying to move your cursor into the center of a circle while avoiding the blocks that move past. I'm fairly decent at Frogger, but my skill is hampered by the control. Sluggish mouse control makes it challenging to swing the cursor into position when there's a tight squeeze, and maneuvering around to the upper portions of the circle (where there may be less block traffic) takes even more time than it does to deal with whatever's in front of you at the bottom when you start. I don't even bother with the hardest decryption level anymore—under normal circumstances, I could probably crack it about half the time, but with these controls I don't stand a chance.Then there's the issue of inventory management. Any other RPG (hybrid FPS or not) will give you a master item/equipment list where you can see everything you have at once, and usually organize everything to some degree. Mass Effect only lets you see what equipment you have when you're on the tab to equip a character with that particular piece of equipment. For example, you can only see what pistols you have when you're getting ready to equip someone with a pistol, and even then, you'll need to scroll down on the page if you have any more than about four or five in stock. Annoyingly, equipment seems to be organized in the order everything was obtained, with no way to sort by name or strength. This gets to be problematic if you're trying to quickly sell off any duplicates you have of a particular item, because the shop menu isn't subdivided by category, so it's one long list of everything you own in the order you obtained it, with any duplicates being all over the list.Any quest-related items are only viewable by opening the associated quest record in your Journal...which is of no help whatsoever if you pick up a Turian Medallion of Gastrointestinal Fortitude or somesuch that pertains to a quest you had no idea existed.I'm also getting frustrated with how inconsistent the dialogue wheel is with adhering to its own rules about where certain kinds of responses should be placed. I'm going for a generally good character who always chooses the Paragon route over the Renegade route, though I'm not above being a little blunt or unfriendly from time to time if the situation calls for it; therefore, I should be sticking to the top and middle options on the wheel, and using the bottom options sparingly, right? Nope. At times, you've got as many as five different questions you can ask someone, all of which are completely prosaic, but they're scattered all about the wheel just so there's enough room for all of them. Other times, an option that looks absolutely harmless will be unexpectedly negative simply because it's on the bottom of the wheel, even when you just clicked on a different response in the same spot and had nothing negative come of it. I sincerely hope they streamlined this with the next game, because I'm tired of saving my progress before I talk to every single person, for fear I'll try to inquire about an alien's culture and end up insulting their mother and sparking a war with their people.Oh, and let's not forget about the numerous times I've put down my sniper rifle to find my ability to run or even jog has been completely revoked until I reload a saved game. Or all the times I've tried to skip through a line of longwinded dialogue and accidentally selected a dialogue option that wasn't even visible on the screen yet. Or the phenomenon where hitting an elevator button too quickly will lodge my squadmates in the corner of the elevator and keep the whole thing from moving while my main character is frozen helplessly in place until the elevator reaches its destination (which it never does).The Mass Effect universe is compellingly complex. The story, characters, technologies, locations, choices, and challenges are fun and interesting. The audio and visuals are top-notch. By all rights, I should be hopelessly immersed. Yet there's a stack of little things now towering high enough to cast a shadow on this otherwise brilliant game. It's difficult to get lost in a game when the elements that are supposed to blend into the background keep reminding you it is a game.Next up: Mass Defect 2

In the 5+ years I've been blogging and making videos, I've been ad-free. No advertisements before my latest Mega Man playthroughs; no flashy widgets in the sidebar telling my readers they're the 10,000th person to be annoyed by this flashy widget today. I am not morally opposed to advertising, but there's never been a strong pull for me to don that sandwich board.It's been a matter of integrity: I like offering my content without any sense that I'm only doing it for the money. It's been a matter of consideration: my readers and viewers are bombarded by advertising everywhere else on the Internet; how refreshing it must be for them to have a break from that. It's been a matter of control: you can't always hand-pick what gets promoted on your site, and the last thing I need is for practically naked fantasy women to spoil the family-friendly appeal of my content, or for gross diagrams of some dude hacking up a lung discouraging even me from looking at my sidebar. It's been a matter of money: I haven't needed that extra income, at least not enough to compromise any of the aforementioned principles.Suddenly I'm planning for a trip overseas, and the thought of having enough money to eat there sounds appealing. I've toyed with the idea of enabling ads on my creative works before, but this is the first time I've ever given it any serious consideration. This is such a simple and obvious source of cash. How many hundreds—if not bajillions—of dollars have I willfully turned down in the past 5+ years?But then there are the ramifications of getting paid. Sure, Google. You've already got my personal e-mail, all of my YouTube videos, four years of blog posts, and probably my credit card details all under one roof. Let me give you my bank account, too. Then there's the paranoia that partnering with YouTube to put ads on my videos will draw more attention from the copyright infringement watchdogs. I suspect "fair use" doesn't hold up so well if I'm profiting from videos that are of fuzzy legality to begin with. Is all this, plus the compromise of the twice-aforementioned principles, worth the $100 that I might get paid by the time I'm ready to go on the trip that's prompted this idea in the first place?An alternative is Patreon, a site that allows fans to become patrons of their favorite content creators, paying them whenever they release new material. I'd need to look more closely at the logistics, but this sounds much more my style. The only problem? From what I understand, creators also need to generate additional exclusive content for their patrons to make it worth their while. I'm barely able to crank out a new video every 1-2 months, and I'm already giving my Facebook followers little tidbits they won't get elsewhere; now I need to figure out more ways to reward and entertain my supporters?Maybe I'm better off playing the lottery.

Even if it's technically just another month, January always feels like a fresh slate, particularly after storing up most of my time off from work for the end of December. Spending extra time with friends, family, my wife, and myself is the best way I know to relax and recharge. For the first time in a long time, I have no real New Year's resolutions to speak of, other than upholding the "Do Something About It" policy I instituted at the end of December. Here's what I've been working on:

YouTube:The Final Fantasy RPGcast took up generous chunks of my recording time, so I didn't end up releasing the next installment of Mega Man 7 as planned (though I did manage to generate commentary for the first half of the video, which, for me, is a major accomplishment). With the Megathon posted and no plans for further GameCola videos in the near future (save for whatever separately recorded podcasts and RPGcasts make their way to YouTube), I wasn't expecting to have anything to share...but sometimes you get a surprise message in your inbox asking you for an interview! Technically, this is my second interview for YouTube, but the first one happened well over a year ago and still hasn't been posted, so...enjoy a 1:1 chat between yours truly and Patricia Miranda of Old School Lane.PBM717:-Old School Lane Casual Chats Episode 26: Interview with Nathaniel "Gemini Laser" Hoover

The Backloggery:A very productive month indeed for my backlog of video games, despite the purchase of a compilation pack once again inflating the list. I took a closer look at my unfinished and unplayed games to weed out anything that (a) technically doesn't have an ending, and I really didn't care that much for to begin with, and (b) I don't even have. I used to, I thought... Anyhousekeeping, I kicked off the year with a slew of new games (well, new for me) and the long-delayed completion of one of the first ones I ever owned. I was also relieved to finally take Secret of Mana off my Now Playing list, having started it with my wife sometime last year and taken sole responsibility for finishing it after she lost interest. (Frankly, I lost interest, too, but that's a discussion you'll hear in GC Podcast #70).New: - King's Quest: Mask of Eternity (PC) - Kirby’s Dream Collection: Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Wii) - Kirby’s Dream Collection: Kirby Super Star (Wii) - Kirby’s Dream Collection: Kirby's Adventure (Wii) - Kirby’s Dream Collection: Kirby's Dream Land (Wii) - Kirby’s Dream Collection: Kirby's Dream Land 2 (Wii) - Kirby’s Dream Collection: Kirby's Dream Land 3 (Wii) - Kirby’s Dream Collection: New Challenge Stages (Wii) - LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Wii)

Well, Google, you win. I've resisted you at every turn, publicly decried your decisions and methods, and conscientiously objected to your unwelcome changes with whatever clever subversions I could muster. Finally you've made it so inconvenient to not have Google+ that any further resistance would defeat the purpose of using your services in the first place.I couldn't comment on my own videos. I had dozens, if not hundreds, of unanswered questions and dangling conversations from my viewers that begged for a response, and you took away my right and privilege to communicate if I didn't sign up for Google+. But then you nullified those conversations without warning—suddenly, Google+ or not, it was physically impossible to respond to any comments posted before a certain date. Was this part of the plan all along, or were you so eager to push your unloved Facebook competitor on us that streamlining the transition didn't matter?I resented the theft of my voice. I ran out of ways to be upset at you, Google. First the obnoxious popups about connecting my accounts, then the subterfuge that led me to unwittingly set up a Google+ account, then the horrendously organized options pages that brought me this close to inadvertently deleting my entire YouTube channel, then the denial of my basic ability to talk to my fans without playing your little game, then the denial of my basic ability to talk to my fans who'd been waiting for months or merely minutes for a response. No amount of resistance, criticism, or outright complaining could satisfy my rage. I had been grumpy before about change for the sake of change; this time your agenda was clear, and this time, I was angry. This is not the creature of habit talking who'd prefer to leave well enough alone; this is the person who despises being bullied and taken for a fool by someone he trusts.Today, I grudgingly but willingly signed up for your Google+. Today, you deprived me of one of the greatest joys I have from making videos: checking my e-mail the day after posting a long-awaited video to discover a deluge of subscriber and comment notifications, and taking my time to read through and appreciate each and every one. Today, after posting a video that's been in the works for two months, my inbox was empty.I don't receive notification e-mails if I'm not signed up for Google+, you see, despite there being e-mail notification options in YouTube whether I've connected Google+ or not. You ever put on a performance only to have the audience stare at you instead of clap when you're finished? That's what this felt like. And navigating to the comments section of the video to see if anybody had said anything was like listening to the audience members talk amongst themselves on their way out of the theater. I was no longer involved in my own videos. I had become a cyber stork who left newborn videos on my subscribers' doorsteps before disappearing from their lives. So I swallowed my righteous pride and admitted defeat. Making videos isn't worth the effort without the human connection, but the human connection, I thought, might be more important than refusing to compromise my principles in the face of a corporation who isn't even listening.I had fun populating my Google+ page with ridiculous information, claiming to be a Super Fighting Robot who works at Dr. Light's Lab and who went to school for special weapons use at the Challenge stages of Mega Man 10. Under better circumstances, Google could have persuaded me to at least create an account for the sake of better publicity—after all, I signed up for Twitter, which I neither like nor fully understand, so that people who prefer Twitter can get automatic updates about my blogging and YouTube activity that way. I'm not unwilling to try new things, but their value needs to be made clear to me if they're not forced upon me. As it stands, I feel dirty for joining Google+ because I neither wanted to nor was truly forced to. It's a little like being blackmailed—do I give in to the villain's demands to maintain the status quo, or do I preserve my sense of morality at the expense of something potentially greater?I started to get anxious when, after two hours of setting up Google+, I still wasn't receiving e-mail notifications—as though I'd sacrificed my principles for nothing. That situation righted itself after enough time had passed, but I'm still finding brand-new comments I cannot respond to, and if I never have to wade through all those settings menus again, it'll be too soon. To me, that's the big tip-off that Google+ was never intended to be so integrated with YouTube: multiple settings menus that all seem to say the same thing and have a delay of several hours before the changes in one place take effect at the other place.So I'm on Google+ now. It's not the end of the world. Maybe I'll end up using it or even liking it. One thing's for certain, though: Unless Google gets their act together and either streamlines or apologizes for this mess, it won't take much for a man who's already abandoned his principles to abandon the company that pushed him over the edge.

My wife told me a story about a study that was performed where one group of artists was told to produce one work of art in a certain time frame, and another group was told to produce as many works as possible in the same time frame. The result was a bunch of stressed-out artists in the first group with gorgeous art and a bunch of contented artists in the second group with a broad range of successes and failures. I've been thinking about this story lately as I've been recording videos at a faster rate than usual.In the last month, I've recorded more footage for YouTube than I have in the last year: a full playthrough of the Game Boy Color adaptation of Crystalis, the first third of my next Mega Man 7 video, and two hours now of an impromptu playthrough of Mega Pony. At the same time, I've released more material of dubious entertainment value in the last month than ever before. It's been both refreshing and disheartening to crank out new videos at the speed the rest of the Internet does.My original plan for Crystalis was to play it on The END DAY as is my yearly custom, but to livestream it and post it to the GameCola YouTube channel. After extensive research and testing, I determined that my current setup was unsuitable for livestreaming, so I fell back on my usual method of recording video footage and adding retrospective commentary. Having learned from my Space Quest 0 playthrough that was supposed to last a weekend and turned into a few months, I made a commitment to myself to record each video's commentary in a single take, unless I said something so catastrophically stupid that only a re-take could salvage it.For the most part, I was able to keep my vow, though one or two videos required a couple takes or a few breaks while I came up with anything to say. Overall, I think everything turned out fine, but I don't have the sense of satisfaction that I had after completing Space Quest 0 or Deja Vu before that. There are funny moments, and I think I bring up some interesting points every now and again, but the gameplay is neither hilarious nor impressive enough to be all that interesting on its own. It's really the commentary that drives my Crystalis videos, and there are large swaths of it that I'd re-record in a heartbeat. Overall, I think the video series is entertaining enough, but as the only full playthrough of this version currently available on YouTube, I think the viewing community deserves better.Speeding through Crystalis allowed me to get back to Mega Man 7 before too much time had passed, however. It took me more than a year to release the teaser trailer for the video series, so I've been trying my hardest to get at least one new video per month to my fans—because it's my favorite video game series and because my viewers have come to expect a certainly level of quality from the gameplay and commentary, it takes me a long time to get my Mega Man videos to a point where I'm satisfied with them.I was on fire with the commentary after Crystalis wrapped up; it normally takes me about one hour to generate and perfect one minute of commentary, and I'm usually only good for an hour or two before recording fatigue sets in, but I breezed through the first 3-1/2 minutes in a single sitting. Since then, it's been almost impossible to get back to it—I can think of things to say for the section I'm in, but nothing feels even remotely interesting. It doesn't help that I feel like I need to deliver extra-perfect commentary to make up for rushing through Crystalis, another one of my all-time favorite games (the NES version, at least), which didn't receive the recording attention I would've given it if I weren't so far behind on MM7.Then, on a whim, I started recording Mega Pony with my wife. The short version is that one of my fellow GameCola staff members alerted me to the existence of a Mega Man / My Little Pony crossover fangame, and when my wife learned about it as well, she got excited and begged me to play it for her, as platformers are not her strong suit. About 30 seconds into the game, we both decided this would be too good a recording opportunity to pass up, so I set things up to record my first-ever honest-to-goodness blind "Let's Play" video. Both of us are tremendously pleased with the result—the commentary is frequently informative and funny, and some of the gameplay is downright hysterical.We sat down to record Part 2 tonight, and neither one of us is feeling all that great about it. Sure, I beat several stages, but I also died repeatedly in the same few spots. Sure, we both made a few funnies, but most of what I remember about the commentary is me trying to form a deep thought about one of the other Mega Man games I've played, getting so distracted by my thought process that I fell into a spike pit, and my wife groaning about how I died again. The shame is that this is supposed to be a live, blind playthrough, so any editing or re-recording would defeat the whole purpose of the video.Crystalis, Mega Man 7, and Mega Pony represent three different kinds of recording styles, and it's odd for me to be bouncing between them. I feel like an artist who was assigned to both groups at once from my wife's story, and because I can't focus on succeeding at one or the other, I'm failing at both. I'm probably being too harsh on myself, as is my tendency when it comes to creative projects, but then it's easier to accept rejection if it turns out my self-criticism isn't unfounded after all.I've said many times before that my videos don't need to be perfect; they just need to be entertaining. With all the recording I've done in the last month, it's hard to tell anymore what qualifies as entertaining. I'm deliberating over every word for Mega Man 7 and spouting whatever comes to mind for everything else; can I really expect to keep a sense of perspective when I'm yo-yoing between two radically different approaches?

I do not want Google+. I am perfectly content to be in a perpetual state of mild dissatisfaction with Facebook; I have no need or desire to add another social media account to my list of things I'll forget to update. I keep telling you this, but you keep asking. And you're dishonest about it, too. You created a Google+ account for me without my consent, tricked me into linking it to my YouTube account, and let me get this close to permanently deleting four years of videos and comments in an effort to destroy this thing I've told you repeatedly I do not want.

Now you harass me every time I log in. Change your name, you tell me. I like my name the way it is. No, really, you say. You've got options. It's a choice, you say. Then why are you still bothering me after I've told you a half-dozen times that I want to keep things the way they are? Is that choice, which you extended to me, not a valid one? And if I truly have a choice, why does every option result in a Google+ account I did not ask for being linked to my account? Either force the change on me like you always do, or leave me alone—this pretense of choice is a waste of my time.

Google, I'm sure you know about the roughly 2,790,000,000 search results that come up on your popular search engine for the phrase, "i don't want google+". That's around one hit for every three people on Earth. Going strictly by the numbers, there are more people who don't want Google+ than people who don't want to go to war. About 1,880,000,000 results for "i don't want to go to war", Google. I realize I'm bandying numbers and taking liberties with how I use your data, but you've been taking liberties with my data, so I feel it's only fair.

If you'd like to argue that it's my choice to use your free services, that's fine. In that regard, I don't have a leg to stand on. If what you're doing is that big a problem for me, I should take my business elsewhere. I assure you: the moment that precariously balanced scale tips so that the bad grossly outweighs the good, I am gone. But I don't want to leave. You offer a service that makes it easy to share my creativity and connect with people all around the world. That's why I'm telling you all this. You were a better business, Google, when "don't be evil" was a creed to live by. Now you resort to the tactics of snake oil salesmen and fast-talking used car dealers to push your innovations on us. Now it's your decision, not ours, whether or not we like what you have to offer. Don't be surprised if you wake up one day to find someone whose creativity and quality of service are appealing enough for the masses to turn away from you, the biggest name in town. After all, Google, how many search engines have been banished to the forgotten corners of Wikipedia since you showed up? Do people still use Lycos?

Listen to your users, Google. Listen to the people who like Google+. Listen to the people who are screaming at you to leave them alone. And for Pete's sake, listen to me when I tell you for the seventh time that I don't want to change my username.